Laughs, Vodka and Memory Lane: A BSC Reunion
by Amandah Leigh
Summary: Bored at work, I decided to write a Babysitter's Club reunion fic...because...well, why not? So here it is, Chapter One... Please Read and Review.


**Laughs, Vodka and Memory Lane: a BSC Reunion**

Disclaimer: Anne M. Martin owns the characters, Law and Order, SVU owns the little excerpt from their opening credits, and I own the Vodka you'll be happy to meet in Chapter two…

* * *

**Chapter One: Where We Stand**

It is a bright, typically cheery day in Stoneybrook, CT. Mary Anne Spier-Bruno-Delacroix is sitting at her kitchen table, across from her childhood best friend, Kristy. It is a calm, well decorated kitchen, with vibrant blue and yellow curtains and pale yellow walls, clean white countertops and a mahogany table right in the center. To be honest, it is Mary Anne's favorite room in the entire house. Though the nursery is awfully nice too.

"I cannot believe it has been twenty years since the club broke up. Twenty long years!" Kristen Amanda Thomas said, sipping her Mountain Dew.

"I can't believe that at this time tomorrow, we will be holding a meeting again, in Claudia's room, just like old times!" Mary Anne grinned and took a sip of her tea. She brushed a strand of medium-length brown hair away from her face and continued.

"I mean, it's like no time has passed, Friday at six, all of us together…But time _has_ passed. A lot of time."

"Not so much time! I mean, we aren't old and gray and living in the retirement village, are we? I just can't wait to show them how Ms. Kristy Thomas has become," she stood up and twirled around dramatically. "Ms. Kristy Thomas!"

Mary Anne laughed. "You could have changed your name after you got married, you know! Most people do!"

"I just didn't want to end up with thirty last names, like some people."

"Oh shut up, Thomas." They chuckled and fell into a comfortable silence, sipping their drinks and thinking. The peace was broken a moment later, though, when three young boys came tearing into the house. They wore muddy jeans, baseball caps, and dirty tee-shirts.

"Christopher! What happened to your shirt!" Mary Anne asked the smallest boy, whose sleeve was ripped.

"Jameson did it! Honest, it's not my fault!" He insisted, as Jameson, the oldest, opened his mouth to protest.

"It's never your fault," said Mary Anne, cutting the older boy off. "And Jameson, I don't want to hear it. All three of you, go upstairs and change, then get back down here and wipe this mud off my floor. And take those sneakers off before you go any further! I just mopped in here!"

"But Mom!" Whined the middle child, a thin boy with brown hair just a shade darker than the other two.

"Don't 'but Mom' me, Michael." Her tone softened. "You three remember my best friend Kristy, right?"

Christopher shook his head, but Jameson and Michael nodded.

"Is Brad here?" Jameson asked, referring to Kristy's eleven year old son.

"He's spending the day with my mother and Watson, but I'll bring him by Saturday if you boys are going to be around."

"We've got Little League," said Michael, gesturing to himself and Jameson, "but he should come to the game! He can hang out with Chris."

By this time all shoes were off, so the boys traipsed upstairs to change.

"And put your clothes in the hamper!" Mary Anne called after them.

Kristy laughed. "Brad's looking forward to seeing them again. How old are they all now?"

"Jameson is twelve—"

"That I knew."

"Michael is ten and Chris just turned seven.

Kristy nodded. "How are they taking your whole new-marriage thing?"

Mary Anne sighed. "Not so well. I mean, Logan and I divorced five years ago, so Chris really doesn't care, because he hardly remembers what it was like when we were together, but the older two are still upset over that. They just don't understand…And they see Yves as the enemy, you know? We've been married almost a year, but they still…I'm afraid to tell them about the baby too, but I know I need to soon. They aren't terribly observant, but if a new kid suddenly appears six months from now, they're gonna ask questions."

Kristy nodded. "If only life were a sitcom. The kid could just appear for a season, then disappear, and no one would notice." Noticing Mary Anne's strange expression, Kristy added, "Or, uh, not."

"Right."

"Brad took it pretty well when Kevin and I split up. It was when we got back together that he became a handful. Go figure!"

"Yeah," Mary Anne sipped her tea. "Go figure."

* * *

Claudia Lynn (Kishi) Babcock is very excited about her friends' upcoming arrival and their subsequent reunion. Her parents even allowed her to put some old pictures (and junk food!) in the guest bedroom so it would seem more like "home." In truth, Claudia had not called that cute little house on Bradford Court 'home' for many years. She moved out at twenty to move in with her then-boyfriend Jake fourteen years ago and never looked back. But sometimes it's nice to look back.

Her parents had been furious when she left. They had even gone so far as to tell her that if she "walk(ed) out the door (she) would be walking out forever."

But when Janine moved in with her boyfriend six months later, they called Claudia, defeated, and asked to reconcile.

The relationship with Jake lasted almost four years (two years after moving in together), and when they broke up she rented a small studio apartment with 'just a friend,' fellow artist Daniel Babcock. A little over a year later, she was pregnant, and they got married on a beautiful beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. There had been two miscarriages after Melissa, and then no more pregnancies.

"It's easy to get pregnant when you're single," Claudia once joked to Stacey, "but once you're in a committed relationship and looking to have kids, it's damn near impossible!" That was before the miscarriages.

Stacey agreed. She could not have children either, though there had been one miscarriage six years into her current relationship. Hence, they chose to adopt.

Claudia stuffed a 16 oz bottle of Diet Coke into the little fridge in the corner of the bedroom and sighed. Soon they would be arriving. Almost…too soon.

"Claudia!" she heard a voice call from downstairs. "You want the chips and stuff up there or in the kitchen?"

It was her cousin, Lynn! Her little namesake. Well, not so little anymore! Lynn had become a striking twenty-one year old who looked an awful lot like Claudia. As a matter of fact, if you lined up pictured of Mimi at forty, Claudia at thirty, Lynn at twenty and Melissa (Claudia's daughter) at ten, one might mistake the photographs to be pictures of the same person at different ages.

"Send Missy up with them, will you? And the dip!"

A few minutes later Melissa bounded up the stairs, two plastic shopping bags in her hands, one with chips and low-fat, no-salt crackers, the other with various dips and cheeses.

"You brought up the cheese?" asked Claudia. "It needs to go in the fridge."

"Mother!" The ten year old whined. "Can't you just stick it in the mini-fridge?"

"Can't, Melissa-bean. It's full of soda and flavored water." Claudia put one of the bags under her bed and then sat upon it (the bed, not the chips!).

"Mom! Don't you know that stuff will rot your teeth? And why hide the junk food?"

Claudia had to laugh. Figures she should have a child just like her parents and sister, a brainy, sensible, carrot-loving girl in love with Chaucer and Fitzgerald, with no interest in Nancy Drew at all. She understood how her parents must have felt to have raised her. So she worked extra hard to make Melissa feel loved and accepted for who she is—even though it meant letting her drop the pottery class she had been taking after school.

"Your grandparents never let me have it, so I hid it. But just to be fair, Aunt Janine hid hers too!"

"Aunt Janine ate junk food?"

"Oh yeah! She was a real rebel, don't let her tell you differently."

Melissa laughed along with her mother.

"I just don't see it!"

"Claudia!" Lynn called again from downstairs. "Stacey's on the phone!"

Claudia jumped up and rushed down the stairs, skipping the bottom two.

"You're going to get hurt, Mother!" Melissa chastised, but her warning fell on deaf ears.

"Stace?" said Claudia when her cousin handed her the phone.

"Claud?"

They both shrieked with excitement. Lynn and Melissa covered their ears.

"I'm going outside!" declared Missy.

Lynn nodded. "I'm with you."

* * *

Stacey had finally returned to Stoneybrook, the place she had called home for nearly six years of her life, from seventh grade until high school graduation (barring that brief period in time in which her family moved back home when Jessi and Mal joined the club, but hey, who's getting technical?).

The first thing she did upon her return was check into her hotel room. The second thing was call Claudia. Secretly, Stacey often felt relieved when thinking about Claudia, and how their friendship had nearly been damaged beyond repair after an awful fight. But they had patched it up and remained close despite!

Someone young answered the phone at the Kishi's, and Stacey assumed it was Lynn. A moment later she was talking to Claudia for the first time in, well, two days. But the first non-long-distance time in three years! They had not seen each other since Claudia had brought Melissa to Stacey's wedding in New York City, though they stayed in touch all the time. Stacey had been to visit Claudia several times over the years too, at her homes in Detroit, Michigan, San Diego, California, Salt Lake City, Utah, Birmingham, Alabama, and Arlington, VA. Claudia and her husband of ten years, Daniel Babcock, were artists, and as such they felt the need to move often, to experience a change or scenery. Since their marriage they had lived in six states, seven towns, and eight houses or apartments.

Stacey had lived in only one. One apartment, in New York City. Twenty years ago she met Zander Blake Lincoln, a former child actor and current talent scout. It had been her first audition, four months out of high school, and he was auditioning too for the male lead. It was a sitcom. Neither of them were cast.

But the started a conversation in the waiting room, and really hit it off. They were represented by the same agency, but neither knew if they really wanted to do television. Stacey wanted to be a movie star ever since she had starred in Grease her freshman year at SHS (though perhaps the bug had really bitten when she played Mrs. Darling opposite Sam Thomas is eighth grade). She returned to her father's apartment that night, the one he shared with wife Samantha and their two young children, and thought to Zandar all night. All week. They talked on the phone constantly, and two weeks after meeting, ended up at an audition together again. Four months later they moved in together, and seventeen years later they married. Why had they waited so long? Well, for some time both thought that marriage just wasn't "their thing." It wasn't until Zandar was diagnosed with cancer three years ago that they decided to "make it legal."

Now cancer-free, and happy as ever, the two still live together in the same apartment in the city, with their two adopted children Luisa and Marcus, an eight year old girl and her seven year old brother who lost their parents two years prior to Stacey and Zandar's wedding. Stacey's television show (the movie career didn't quite pan out) was her first drama—and her biggest hit! She portrays Assistant DA Sophie Mays on the long-running program Law and Order, SVU and has already been nominated twice for Emmys in her four years on the program.

Stacey loves her husband, her children, her apartment, her job and her life. But even she remembers a time when life was simpler—and yet much, much more complicated. Back when she was just another member of the BSC.

* * *

Dawn was not quite looking forward to the reunion, but, as a favor to Mary Anne, sheagreed to go.

Her stepsister was the only person Dawn had any desire to keep in contact with post that awful fight just after high school graduation. She was in Stoneybrook for the summer, as usual, and not altogether disappointed to discover that, as Mary Anne had told her in numerous letters, The Babysitters Club was no more. Mary Anne had a steady after school job with the Pike family, watching Nicky, Margo and Claire until their mother arrived home from work, at the elementary school where she tutored fourth and fifth graders. During the summers her hours were cut back to Tuesday and Thursday mornings, as Mrs. Pike tutored those days.

Dawn went with Mary Anne to her sitting job one day, a Thursday. She was pleased to see Mallory for the first time in almost a year, and she enjoyed watching the kids (then ages 12, 11 and 9). After Mrs. Pike returned home, Mallory, Mary Anne and Dawn rode their bikes to the Pizza place, where Kristy, Abby and Jessie were waiting. Claudia arrived a few minutes later, and Stacey right after that. They chatted and laughed and gossiped for almost two hours, eventually deciding to take the party to Claudia's house.

That was where everything began to go downhill.

Conversation turned more serious, and soon they began playing a game of "truth or truth," a spin-off of Truth or Dare that involves no Dare option. They got on the subject of drinking, and the stupidest/craziest/funniest thing that had done while under the influence.

Claudia admitted getting drunk at Pete Black's party and telling Cokie Roberts that she was a "beautiful, beautiful person, inside and out."

Mallory and Jessie, giggling, confessed to having stolen Wine Coolers from the fridge in the Braddock's basement, then drinking them in the woods near the SES playground. (Kristy scolded them, in typical ex-president fashion).

Mary Anne confessed that the only liquor she had ever consumed was a sip of wine or champagne here and there, and only in her father's presence. "But once I smoked pot with Logan," she added after the cries of "goody-goody," and "Miss. Perfect" died down.

Stacey blushed terribly red as she admitted to having gotten "wicked wasted" at a party in New York City, when she "Made out with a guy who had a girlfriend. And then made out with his girlfriend."

Kristy, thoroughly disgusted by this, assured them all that she had never been drunk, nor would she ever try it, in fear of doing something just as "gross and stupid."

(She did not hear Stacey whisper to Claudia, "well, at least she was a pretty hot girl!")

Abby told them all that she and Anna often down Screwdrivers (Vodka and OJ) when their mother is out of town, and she once broke a 750 dollar vase when she walked into the table it was on. "The most expensive drunk screw-up in the club, I'd bet!" she said. But she was grinning. "I thought my mother was going to _kill_ me!"

And then it was Dawn's turn.

"I ran into TJ Greene at the mall, he works in the record store, and he invited me to a party at Judi Brand's new apartment, and we drank about four shots of tequila each, and then some rum and coke, and then we did it in her bathroom."

Dawn expected her friends to be shocked.

But not as angry and appalled as they were.

"When was this?" Stacey asked quietly.

"Three weeks ago," Dawn could still remember answering like it was yesterday. "Why?"

Stacey's beautiful blue eyes filled with tears.

"She's been dating him for the last ten months, Dawn," said Claudia slowly.

Dawn was horrified. "What? But he said-"

"Everyone knows that they're together!" Kristy exclaimed, jumping up. "He even asked her to marry him! She has a ring! Right after they graduate college, they both got into the same one—"

Claudia put her arms around Stacey and glared at Dawn. "How could you?"

"I didn't _know_—"

"You must have known! We talked about it today!" Mallory said suddenly from her spot on the floor.

"How was I supposed to know that her boyfriend Thomas was Thomas Greene! There are a million Thomas's! And he _said_ he goes by TJ! What am I psychic?"

"Psychic, no," snapped Kristy. "Cheap, well, your actions speak for themselves!"

Dawn looked to Mary Anne for support, but her stepsister was starting intently at her shoelaces (pink, with Hello Kitty's face). "I _swear_ I didn't know!"

"Oh come off it, Dawn!" Claudia sneered. "You knew! Just like the summer after eighth grade when you knew I liked Billy and you kissed him anyway!"

"We were playing spin-the-bottle!"

"Face it," said Kristy, coming closer to Dawn. "Everyone knows what you've turned into since you've been out there in Sunny California. Maybe out there they call it friendly. Here we just call it slutty."

"I Am NOT a slut!"

"Oh no?" Asked Claudia, eyes flashing. "You meet a guy in the mall and then just go and sleep with him! That's not slutty?"

"You do kind of have a reputation around here, Dawn," said Jessi gently. "That's why so many guys ask you out every summer when you're around."

"I've only been with four guys in my whole life! And only two were here!"

"_Only_ four?" scoffed usually quiet Mallory. "_Only_, she says."

Abby frowned. "But Dawn, even if you don't go all the way a lot, you do tend to…er…go kind of far."

"We always called you California Casual," Claudia cut in. "but we thought we were referring to your style, not your sex life."

"I am not…I dated two of those guys long term, and one all summer here, and I was just drunk when TJ and I…"

"Face it," Kristy snapped. "You're a whore."

Stacey wiped her eyes and looked up at Dawn. "Please. Just leave. I need to be alone with my friends right now."

So Dawn left, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the entire pizza restaurant's clientele were staring at her.

Mary Anne followed her a few minutes later. "I talked to them—" she started to say, but Dawn snapped at her.

"Oh really? I'm surprised, since you said NOTHING while I was being called a slut and a whore and all of that!"

"It's just that, well, they're _upset_ Dawn. And—I mean, poor Stacey is _crushed_—and so she needs time to…"

"And it's _my_ fault? I noticed no one is calling up that cheating scum TJ and branding him a slut! Dammit, Mary Anne! I'm going for a walk. Leave me alone, I'll see you at home."

No, Dawn Reid Shafer was NOT looking forward to the reunion.

* * *

Jessi and Mallory were the BSC's junior members. There was a time when they dreamed of being something more, regular, full-fledged sitters, maybe even officers, able to babysit at night…

But that never happened.

The club disbanded when they were twelve, but with Mallory away at boarding school and Jessi focusing on dance, neither really noticed nor, at the time, cared.

They knew that they were born to do other things. Better things.

Mallory was born to be a writer.

She wrote constantly, manuscripts and plays and short stories for kids and mysteries and novels and poetry and prose.

She was destined for a career as a great and talented author, to be showered with awards and praise and bombarded with requests for signed books and to have a fan base that made the number of JK's Harry Potter followers look weak. She went first to Eastern Connecticut State University and then to Yale.

She sent works to publishers and received wonderful feedback.

All this to become a seventh grade teacher.

Yes, a seventh grade teacher.

Sigh.

That isn't to say she totally gave up on her dreams! It's just that, while attending the State University she began to think about money, job stability and security. Everyone was talking about the teacher shortage…and it seemed like such a nice idea. School from 8 to four, summers off to focus on writing, maybe try some of her better works in her classroom, get some feedback from actual kids, stay in touch with what seventh grade students think and feel.

And it paid off.

Eight years ago she had her first big break as a writer, when a publishing company decided to take on the first five books in her I Survived Junior High series. The debut book, Peyton Pike is NOT a Cheerleader sold more copies than she could have dreamed of, and the next four books did just as well. Less than a decade later, Mallory released But If Janie Can Do It, the 32 book in the series. She still teaches seventh grade, and loves every minutes of the school year. Though she loves the summers more.

Despite having been engaged twice, Mallory never married and never had children.

"Who has time for kids?" she would always say when people asked. "Besides, there are twenty-five twelve year olds in my care five days a week, and I have fourteen nieces and nephews. That's plenty of kids for me!"

She also never left Stoneybrook. She rents a room in her sister Vanessa's five-bedroom house, where the now-30 year old former poet lives with her husband, former babysitting charge 28 year old Matt Braddock, and their three children, Ashley, Mickey (aka, Mathew Junior) and Spencer. Vanessa became a teacher too, at Stoneybrook High School, and Matt decided to teach ASL at the special Deaf school he once attended.

This weekend the crowded house would be shared by someone new. Someone Mallory had not seen in nearly a year, but kept in touch with through occasional letters, phone calls, and emails.

Jessica Ramsey.

Mallory had no time to think about getting ready for the reunion. She spent the entire week fixing up the den for Jessi's visit. Finally, her childhood best friend arrived.

"Jessi!" Mallory squealed when she opened the front door of Number 12, Bradford Court and saw the tall, slender beauty standing there, luggage in hands.

Jessi dropped her bags and hugged the redhead tightly.

"Mal! You look great! Wow, you've lost weight since I last saw you, right?"

Mallory grinned. "Ten pounds."

"Awesome. You look awesome."

"Come in, Jess! I'll show you the den, then we can sit and talk."

Jessi grabbed one suitcase and allowed Mallory to take the other. "Can we talk and eat at the same time though? I'm starving!"

"Sure thing." They placed Jessi's stuff in the den and settled in the comfortable kitchen.

"What have you been up to since the show closed, Jessi?"

Jessi took a bite of her apple and leaned forward. "Well!"

Over the next hour Jessi told her tale to Mallory.

"When you saw me last year, like I told you, I had just gotten hired as choreographer for Cabaret, which came back to Broadway just last month."

"I read the reviews! Everyone loves it."

"Thanks. It was a great show, and the cast was really talented. Easy to work with. Actually, the girl who played Sally Bowles, her older sister and I studied together at Julliard and we were quite close. That's where I met Tyrelle Stone. He was playing Cliff. As I wrote in my letters, I started seeing Ty a few months into rehearsals, and of course Niko found out. Well he was pissed, right, and we had this huge fight…"

"You mentioned that in your letter, and you said you'd tell me more when you'd see me. I really wanted to come visit you."

"And I told you not too. I'm sorry about that. It's just that…He hit me pretty hard and my eye bruised up, and I didn't want anyone to know."

"He hit you? He…Oh my gosh! I can't believe it, I am so sorry Jessi, I…"

"Mal, it's okay. I mean, it's not okay, but it's…it's over. And it only happened once. Honest! Anyway, when I got to rehearsal Ty was furious and insisted I come to stay with him. I protested at first, but he said that his kids were with his ex so he was all alone anyway…"

"Didn't he used to be married to that actress, Nagini White?"

Jessi nodded. "Yeah. She was on an episode of Stacey's show."

"I saw it." Mal laughed. "It's weird, isn't it? We're just eight girls from a pretty small town, and we've all done pretty well. Stacey's famous, you're working for Broadway, I'm a writer, everyone seems really good."

"Yeah. I can't wait to see them too."

"Yeah," Mallory dipped her apple slice in caramel sauce and took a bite. "so then what happened?"

"He wanted me to press charges, but I talked to Niko and told him that if he just let me have a divorce, clean and simple, I would share custody of Thalia and not have him arrested, though I took picture of my eye just in case. He agreed, and it's all gone pretty smooth. But I can't help thinking of what Aunt Cecilia told me on my wedding day."

Mal grinned. "Don't marry a skinny white guy with a name like Niko Pasiakos?"

Jessi laughed too. "No, the other thing."

"Which was?"

"Only marry him if you can close your eyes at this moment and picture him by your side fifty years from now and have that image still make you smile."

"You couldn't picture him in fifty years?"

"Not with a smile! But I was already pregnant, though I didn't tell anyone that," Jessi began, but Mallory interjected with a correction.

"You told me!"

"Okay," Jessi conceded. "I told you. And Becca. But that was it. Thalia was born eight months later, we called her a preemie and everything was A-Ok."

"They really fall for that bullshit?"

"I doubt it. But they've never said anything. So, anyway, since I last saw you I got divorced and re-engaged and I might get a Tony nomination for my work on Cabaret. Not too shabby."

"Is Thalia with Niko this weekend?"

"With my parents in Jersey. Niko is busy with some client of his, a model, somewhere in Mexico. And Ty couldn't leave New York right now. Oh, you'd love him Mal! He's so sweet, and so good looking! Tall and handsome, his skin is just a shade lighter than mine, and his eyes are so dark and soulful. His teeth are perfect, just like an actor, and his skin, and his body…You should see his body! I think I packed pictures; I'll bring them to the reunion. I've got shots of Becca, Squirt and Thalia too to show everyone."

"I can't wait!"

"Neither can I."

* * *

"Hey Anna, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind! Hey Anna! Hey, hey, hey Anna!" Abby sang into her cell phone as she drove home for the mall. "It's me, of course. Call me back when you can, okay?" She signaled to turn right and began to sing again. "Abby's too sexy for her twin, too sexy for her twin oh ain't it a sin? No way I'm disco dancing!" she laughed out loud and braked for some kids to cross the street, probably headed to her neighbors house. She recognized them as Adam Pike's four energetic offspring, so she beeped the horn and waved. The three boys and one girl waved back, as did their sitter, Jennifer Newton, Jamie and Lucy's younger sister.

She watched them enter and sighed when they were out of site. 34 years old, and Abby had no children, no nieces, no nephews, no children in the family at all. And this rather saddened her. She pulled into the driveway of her small, ranch-style home and turned off the ignition. She entered the house through the front door and dropped her recent purchases on the floor in the entry way, continuing into the kitchen to her left.

She had yet to marry, or even have a relationship that lasted longer than a few boring months before fizzling out. Anna on the other hand, had gotten married straight out of college. Like Abby, Anna taught at Stoneybrook High School (doesn't everyone?) but Anna had no desire to have her own children. Not yet, at least.

So Abby settled for teaching history to "kids" between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and coaching both Girls Soccer and Softball. Which she found very rewarding.

Sort of.

In Abigail Stevenson's opinion, teaching was a career for people who couldn't make it in their dream job, so they got degrees allowing them to teach writing or acting or music or sports, so that they could pretend that they were somehow too good to do it professionally, and it would only be right to share that knowledge with younger, less worthy, perhaps future famous people. Or teachers. But teaching was sure as hell a lot better than sitting behind a desk all day, answering phones and filing papers, or spending all evening on one's feet, asking, "would you like fries with that?" She knew this for a fact. She had tried both.

Abby sighed, thinking about the impending 'reunion.' She opened the fridge, saw nothing she wanted, and closed it again. She grabbed an orange off the counter, and headed into the living room. Plopping down on the couch, she grabbed the remote and switched the TV on.

"In the criminal justice system, especially heinous crimes…"

"Oh, wonderful," she muttered, rolling her eyes and beginning to peel her orange. "Special Victims Unit. Oh! And there she is!" She exclaimed with false excitement as Stacey McGill appeared in her business suit and briefcase in the opening credits. Abby rarely watched her former friend's show (_Former friend? Were we ever friends?_)

Abby clicked around for about ten minutes, watching a little bit of The People's Court with Judge Milian, then hopping over to Lifetime to check out the latest sappy TV movie, then caught some of the highlights from the baseball game in which the Red Sox won the World Series.

"Evil fluke," she commented out loud. "And may it be another 80-plus years before you do it again."

After finding nothing interesting on any of the many channels, she ended up back at TBS, watching the SVU recent repeat.

_"That's your evidence?" Stacey was saying. "That's all you've got, and you expect me to make a case out of that?"_

"_Hey, we had to get him off the street," the male cop replied, but Stacey's character was obviously unimpressed. _

"_So you went ahead and arrested him, and now what? I can't make this case to a judge on what you've got! I've got to go argue about bail in a half hour, and you expect me to ask for—what? We have no case!"_

Abby sighed again, and took a bite of her orange. Abby could not believe how it had all turned out. Stacey had played Sandy in the same production of Grease in which Abby had portrayed Rizzo.

"So maybe her career will fizzle out soon, and I'll end up playing the First Lady in some White House drama on NBC," she joked wryly. While little had changed about Abby in terms of looks, her sense of humor had definitely matured from silly slapstick and puns to straight sarcasm, perhaps a result of her new, more cynical approach to life.

"Whatever."

She put on The People's Court.

* * *

A/N

Okay, wicked dull beginning, I know…just wanted to set some things up…This fic will be short, three chapters probably, so we'll have to down the Vodka pretty quickly (everything will seem much more enjoyable after…trust me!) So… Drink up! (and, if you're not too sloshed, review). :) AL


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